


An Unexpected Companion

by Ganymeme



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 15:05:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3614382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ganymeme/pseuds/Ganymeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The monkey hadn't been part of the plan.</i><br/>  <i>Though that assumed there had been a plan, or anything truly resembling a plan, in the first place.</i><br/> <br/>Dorian flees home, but a bit of home comes with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unexpected Companion

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the [concept art of Dorian and a monkey](http://41.media.tumblr.com/616798748873c609f1ee4a1a8ef0d976/tumblr_nhbhh3uXO71tf03bho1_1280.png) and [debora-fm's art on that subject](http://debora-fm.tumblr.com/post/109480042637/au-where-everything-is-the-same-but-that-monkey).

The monkey hadn't been part of the plan.

Though that assumed there had been a plan, or anything truly resembling a plan, in the first place. No one asked about it later, but if (when) Dorian told them anyway, there was always a plan. It was better that way, made it all seem much more sensible and deliberate. Less panic and half-blind scrabbling through the gilded detritus of his life. Less fear and sorrow knotting in his chest and throat. More charming exile, less graceless runaway.

The point was, if there had been a plan, it wouldn't have included the monkey.

He fled his parents’ house like a common thief. If a common thief had been so uncommon as to be both an altus and bear the familial seal that let him pass the estate’s wards. It was always the dark of night, when he told the story, but in truth it had been but an hour before dawn. No properly fashionable altus stirred until well after terce, but he had lain awake all night, mind racing. The first hour had been drawing ever closer, creeping up like the soft rays of the winter sun, when he had finally resolved upon a course of action.

So it was that he left in a stumbling flurry of activity. Dorian could only laugh at the poor fool in his memories now, at his abysmal choices of clothing, at what was needed and what was not. He’d had no idea, of course. Not then. There was no plan, only desperation and resolve: he would go south. There was some sort of war on, but he didn’t know the details. Something about templars and Circles.

It mattered not. There was always some sort of war on. All that mattered was the south was not Tevinter - for he could not stand to be in the Imperium a single day, a single hour or moment, longer.

Dorian crept from his ancestral home swathed in satin, silver, and fine leather. He had a bulging pack slung awkwardly over one shoulder and his staff clutched in hand. The grey morning light was soft, melting around him like a song, washing the dew a shining silver. As he tip-toed through the gardens that ringed the manse, he could hear the chapel bells tolling prime behind him.

The Pavus gardens were his mother’s pride and joy. Her only pride and joy, so far as Dorian could tell. The islands of brilliant flowers and deep greenery were held aloft by her own spells, cascading and drifting downwards from the manse’s height in shapes and patterns that amplified those very spells - and others besides. In some places the islands were close enough that you could step down as you would a stair. In others, it took the clever levitation of stone to form a path or bridge between or down.

The easiest path was not a direct one, and Dorian was, after all, in a hurry. He skittered down stairways of stone, awkwardly slid down a trellis of snakevine, dodged under the venomous, unopened, winter blooms of the sklerosia and, five feet from the solid, unmagicked ground below, tripped over the monkey.

The lowest gardens had been let grow in the artfully wild Donarkoi style. Supposedly it was in imitation of the northwestern jungles of the Donarks - Dorian had never been, so he couldn’t speak to its accuracy. But “jungle” apparently meant “overgrown paths and roots growing just to trip you up and also you can’t see where you put your own blighted feet”. He’d been sidling past a plant twice his height with massive, mottled leaves bigger than his face when his foot caught on just one of those roots. A stumble, overbalanced by pack and his own sleeplessness, arms pinwheeling until he caught himself with his staff. He paused a moment, panting, leaning forward and sideways. Cautiously, squinting in the gloom, he lifted his left foot, moved it forward - and set it down on something  _warm_  and  _furry._

Dorian yelped, the furry thing shrieked and  _moved_ , plants and shadows blurred, then he was face first and spitting dirt, being scolded very loudly by an irate monkey. A rather large monkey. With a very colourful face and long, sharp teeth.

“Well I’m sorry!” He snapped at the creature, his voice cracking, and pushed himself up out of the dirt and into a sitting position. “I am but a lowly human and cannot see foolish animals sleeping in the middle of -”

He paused, and the monkey paused. It (she, not it - a memory bubbled up of his mother’s languid murmuring, smug at her latest acquisition of the bit of furry exotica) stared at him and he at it. Her. Dorian resisted the utterly inane urge to giggle.

“I,” he informed the plants, the shadows, the world and universe as a whole, “am talking to a monkey.”

Said monkey rocked back on her haunches and grumbled something deep in her throat. Dorian sighed and ran one trembling hand over his hair. He felt grit smear over his scalp and cursed. A few frantic moments of wiping the dirt off his hands and he turned his attention to his hair, picking at it with fingers that still shook.

His heart was racing, he realized vaguely, and he felt a little like he was going to be sick. Dorian buried his face in his hands. This was foolish. All of this. What in the Maker’s holy name was he doing? Why run? He was leaving everything, everything he had ever known - 

“ _It could leave him a vegetable! Little more than a corpse that breathes!"_

“ _Better that than some perverted catamite!"_

Ah. Yes. Right. He swallowed past the fear and betrayal, shoved it all down into a black pit in his mind, took a deep breath - and lost it in a yelp as he felt tiny fingers dig at his hair. He tried to jerk away, but a warm weight ascended his back, a tight grip digging into his neck and shoulders. The monkey’s tail brushed at his elbow and she again grumbled deep in her throat. Clever fingers picked through his hair, tugging and pinching and flicking away the flecks of dirt and mulch and stone.

This time he did giggle. High pitched and a little hysterical. The monkey was on his shoulders. The monkey was grooming him. Dorian could honestly say he knew more about Nevarran taxation policy than he did monkey behaviour. And all he could think of were those sharp inches of yellowed canines.

He sat in the dirt of his mother’s garden as the sun climbed higher, the grey half light giving way to a sky of the palest blue, liberally studded with white. A stiff sea breeze was kicking up by the time the monkey deemed his hair suitably picked over (and, Dorian was sure, thoroughly mussed). She climbed off his shoulders with no regard for where soft skin showed through cloth, leaving him wincing.

Dorian eyed her suspiciously. The monkey nobly ignored him and crouched over a bulging tree root to dig for … something. Bugs, probably. Did monkeys eat bugs?

Sighing heavily, Dorian finally climbed to his feet. He freed his hair from its tie just long enough to pull it back neatly, then continued onwards.

He had made it barely 10 feet along the solid ground, headed towards the gates that marked the edge of the Estatus Pavosi before he realized two things. One, that it was almost certainly going to rain later and he had forgotten to pack a rain-cloak. Two, he was being followed.

By the monkey.

**Author's Note:**

>  _prime_ and _terce_ : terms now primarily seen in the Liturgy of the Hours meaning the first and third hours of the day respectively. "First hour" = 6 AM and "third hour" = 9 AM. Other hours can be seen [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy_of_the_Hours#Traditional_Roman_Breviary).
> 
> _catamite_ : technically, a boy who is the receiving partner in anal intercourse with a man. Not the nicest of terms.
> 
> And in case it wasn't clear, yes the ancestral Pavus estate buildings (and gardens) are floating. Because magic (and a reference in _The World of Thedas_ to Tevinter architecture involving magic levitation of stone). Also a bit of quick research had me conclude that the monkey is probably some sort of baboon-like creature, but doesn't fit precisely with real world baboons. So I'm calling it a harlequin baboon. Because why not.


End file.
